When comparing Winyl vs AIMP, the Slant community recommends AIMP for most people. In the question“What are the best music players for Windows?”AIMP is ranked 2nd while Winyl is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose AIMP is:

AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types.

Pros

Pro

Looks great

Winyl has a beautiful interface with thumbnails for each album (if the art is in the ID tag). If not, you can easily add cover art. It also has a great mini player and that too has cover art.

Pro

This program uses .cue files to split albums that are in one file

This is a convenient tool for those who may have many albums that are not yet split into separate files for each song.

Pro

The library is well organized

Winyl organizes your library by folder and not by ID3 tags. As such, your library stays organized (as long as your music folders are organized) even if you have incorrect or missing ID3 tags.

Pro

You can quickly and easily add music

Winyl is designed to be a fast media player with low resource usage, meaning that it takes about 20 minutes to load 67 000 files. This is a pretty good time frame in comparison to some other media players' import times. So for those with a large library, this may be a good choice.

Pro

Album view

Shows albums, covers and tracks next to it, like Google Music.

Pro

Multiple audio codec compatible

AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types.

Pro

Useful audio library

AIMP can play, manage, and filter music stored in the whole computer or specified folders. It is able to read metadata from music files' tags and perform real-time searching out of it.

Pro

Lightweight skinning

Even with lots of skinning options, AIMP is lightweight and works on the smallest computer.

Pro

Internal updater

AIMP updates using its built-in updater, so you don't have to visit AIMP's website and download the whole installer every time a new version is available.

Pro

Among the best audio quality for Windows audio players

AIMP uses the BASS library, which provides one of the best audio quality of all currently available music players for Windows.

Pro

Tag Editor + Audio Converter can carry out a multitude of tasks

AIMP has two tools for further music management.

Tag Editor lets you add album art to audio files, fix metadata to individual files or to all files included in a folder, rename filenames, complete tags from filenames and viceversa, and more.

Audio Converter lets you convert an audio file into another format (for instance, from FLAC to M4A). You can choose quality parameters, renaming of files, and output paths for converted files. Audio conversion supports multiple core encoding, so if your CPU has four cores, you can convert audio using 1, 2, 3, or 4 cores.

Pro

Mini Player support

AIMP can be maximized, restored, sent to the tray, or switched to Mini Player for your convenience.

Pro

Delete files from player

Simple and good working ability to delete files right away from the player.

Pro

Built-in scheduler

AIMP has a scheduler which lets you stop playback, close the program, or turn off your computer at a specified time/period.

Pro

Multiple playlist management

AIMP can manage multiple playlists by a tab system, similar to web browsers.

Pro

Supports audiophile-level playback quality

Other music players usually require separate plugins for this, but AIMP comes by default with the modern WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) audio output support thus providing purest sound output unadultered by the Windows mixer (in WASAPI Exclusive mode) out of the box.

Pro

Icon sets available for download

The user can download icon sets for different audio formats.

Pro

Waveform seekbar

AIMP's seekbar features a waveform display of the entire audio file for easier navigation within the sound file. For example you can easily see where are the silences which is especially useful for podcasts and talked content.

Pro

Allows for radio capture

AIMP can grab internet radios' audios and save them to drive, in real-time. You can save the streaming in its original format, or choose the codec manually [AAC, OGG Vorbis, OPUS, etc] and its bit rate. You can even save its CUE log and split files, if desired.

Pro

18 band equalizer + 22 presets + preamp

AIMP has an 18 band equalizer (which is manually customizable), plus 22 presets by default [user can add his/her custom presets]. It also includes a +15/-15 dB preamplification.

Pro

DSP manager allows for sound effects

AIMP has a digital sound processor manager which lets you apply sound effects to the output audio in real-time. These effects include: echo, reverberation, Flanger, Chorus, bass, enhancer, speed, tempo, and pitch. It also has a voice remover feature for stereo audio files.

Pro

Support for several WinAmp's plugins

AIMP supports several plugins originally designed for WinAmp. However, it also supports new plugins designed for AIMP itself. From visual plugins to extra codec support, YouTube playlists playback, Soundcloud playback, or spectrum analysing, these are a selection of supported plugins.

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Cons

Con

It only shows the file name when playing tracks

Winyl cannot display the format or bitrate of the track as it plays. The user must therefore find the file in their library, select it, and go to properties.

Con

Not open source

AIMP is not libre / open source software, so development is closed and lead by the AIMP staff only.

Con

AIMP "Help" only in Russian and English

AIMP's "Help" included in the software itself is only available in Russian and English.

Con

Cluttered and confusing interface

The interface is very busy and not intuitive so it can take awhile to become familiar with it. The skins don't conform to specific design standards so they often have different behaviors. You can read more about it here.

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